Career success won't scare off modern suitors

SWANS are powerful, driven female professionals who live in urban areas and have advanced degrees and high-status jobs. The trouble with SWANS is, they aren't married, and some are afraid they never will be.

SWANS have been added to the lexicon of demographic acronyms by Christine Whelan, one of their own. She has an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a doctorate from Oxford University and is the author of "Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women" (Simon & Schuster, $24).

She started writing the book after seeing wedding announcements in The New York Times for two guys she had dumped and after being dumped herself by a guy who said he couldn't date her because she was "intellectually intimidating."

"I cried myself to sleep, terrified I'd be alone forever because no one wanted to date a dorky PhD."

In her book, Whelan examines the belief held by many that smart, successful women are overqualified for marriage.

She found that in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, successful women were indeed less likely to marry. But, using 2005 census information and a national survey she commissioned -- plus interviews with more than 100 men and women from nine cities -- she concluded that the "success penalty" -- the so-called price women pay for being smarter or richer than many men -- is disappearing.

A myth debunked

She found that successful, well-educated young women marry at the same rates as all other women -- maybe just a little later -- and that their income and their education may, in fact, make them more attractive.

The reason? Times have changed, even if perceptions haven't. Her book is full of the testimony of young women who hide or play down their degrees, job titles or salaries to keep men from fleeing the room.

Who are these SWANS?

Whelan defines them as women with a graduate or professional (law or medicine) degree and income in the top 10 percent of women in their age group. That would be women ages 24 to 34 who earn $50,000 a year and women 35 to 40 who earn $60,000 a year.

Practically speaking, the pursuit of an advanced degree for a toehold in business or the professions is likely to delay the wedding. But Whelan's reading of census data shows that SWANS in their early 30s are just as likely to walk down the aisle as their less accomplished sisters. And women in their late 30s are significantly more likely to marry.

The reason? Men are changing.

Because their mothers probably worked outside the home, because their teachers or their professors or their pediatricians might have been women, men's ideas of success and family include a woman with a career.

Sharing the burden

In addition, many men are relieved to know they don't have to be the sole breadwinner..

How did we get to a place where smart, accomplished women need so much reassuring?

We can pinpoint the moment: June 1986. Newsweek magazine reported that college-educated women who are still single at 35 have only a 5 percent chance of getting married. And then, in an unfortunate choice of hyperbole that has haunted the magazine since, Newsweek said that a college-educated 40-year-old woman was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to get married.

In the two decades since then, Whelan points out, social research has demonstrated a steady shift in the attitudes and patterns of marriage, but Newsweek's goofy terrorist analogy -- nothing more than a reporter's offhand remark -- has stuck in the consciousness of women like popcorn in molars.

This summer, Newsweek revisited the subject, apologized somewhat for its poor choice of words, and reported the same sea change Whelan found: 90 percent of Baby Boomer men and women either have married or will marry, a ratio that is in line with historical averages.

Likewise, Newsweek affirmed Whelan's finding that today, a college degree makes a woman more likely to marry, not less.

No excuses

Dating and marriage are tough enough, Whelan concludes, without women making the excuse that they aren't successful at it because they are "too fabulous."

Whelan makes her best point about marriage in the very first pages of the book. In a letter she had written to herself as a teenager, addressed to "Christine at 25," from "Christine at 15," she wished this for herself:

"I hope things work out for you and you learn to find the balance between heart and mind."

Whelan is due to marry next summer, and one hopes that she has discovered in researching this book the truth that her 15-year-old self knew instinctively.

That marriage might not be the goal -- a balanced life might be the goal.